How to Manage Millennials and How Lead Using the Carrot Principle w/ The Carrot Guys

Audio Transcription

In a world where Gallup now reports that nearly 70 percent of employees are disengaged, how do the best managers use recognition to engage their people, to retain their people and to accelerate performance. On today’s podcast, the New York Times bestselling authors and Speakers of choice for American Express, wd 40 Johnson and Johnson, Avis, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley in the United States army, and other massive organizations. Chester, Elton and Adrian gastic stopped by to teach us how to manage millennials, had a credit, healthy corporate culture, and how to increase employee engagement.

On today’s show, I am super excited to be interviewing today’s guests, the carrot guys Adrian, stick in Chester, Elton the best selling authors in the tag team duo, DrZ. , who now simply referred to themselves as the carrot guys, the carrot guys. See what’s up, die. We’ve got to come up with a cool name like that. I mean, I know Batman and Robin’s already taken the carrot guys parked to salary salary throughout their career. Carrot guys have become number one, New York Times best selling authors. They’d been featured on USA Today, Wall Street Journal there. Carrot principle was a book that I read years ago and it helped me really change the culture at my company at the time. Dj Connection Dot com, which is one of the largest wedding entertainment company on the planet. And so now, without any further ado, Adrian Chester, welcome onto the thrive time show gesture. How are you, sir?

You know, if it gets much better at, won’t be fair. Thanks.

Uh, Adrian, do you want to one up gesture there with a more clever response?

I can. Couldn’t possibly want up chester out there. Play Dot z. just thrilled to be on the show. Thanks.

All right, well, my first question coming in hot is for Mr Adrian and Z. I’m sure you’ve seen the stats. Seventy one percent of employees according to Gallup, are now disengaged from the workplace, not engaged. Now you and I, between the two of us, we have hundreds of employees and you know, this is a constant challenge to engage people. So I’d really like to start with you Adrian and ask you about this. How big of a problem is employee disengagement from, from your perspective?

Well, you know, we all know, you know, we’ve probably all been there at some point in our lives where we just, you know, there’s just something about the work experience that’s disengaging as typically it’s our manager. It’s, you know, the old saying, people don’t leave companies, they leave their supervisors. And what we’re finding in our, in our new research is that, you know, it’s not just about engaging people, more engagement numbers just aren’t moving. What we found is that you also have to enable people. You have to support them and empower them and you also have to keep their energy levels high. Otherwise, you know, this idea of engagement just doesn’t work without these accelerators of enablement and, and driving energy within our teams.

I want to get your take on this. Why are you guys so passionate about this subject of improving employee engagement? There are so many other topics out there. You guys are brilliant authors, great researchers. Why are you two so locked in to this concept of employee engagement?

It’s such a great question and we’ve looked at that for almost 20 years now, and the fact is is that you know you don’t have separate lives anymore. You’ve got a life that incorporates work and everything else. We’ve all got smartphones, will I’ll work in 24 slash seven, and his idea of when you’re happily engaged and motivated at work, you’re happy in your personal life. A lot of really interesting studies done even at the University of California to move that out, that you know this, this engagement in the workplace is causing dysfunction in every other part of your life. So you know at the culture which we talk about, what we make people better. We make people better leaders, they make better teammates, and that translates into just making them better people. And you know what the reason we’re so passionate about it as the world’s just need better people and we deserve to be able to go to a workplace where we can believe what we do matters. We make a difference and will make that difference is noticed and celebrated so that we can take all that good positive energy home and build better families and better community. So that’s our passion. It starts at the workplace. We spend so much time at work. When that goes bad, everything goes bad. And that’s why we’re so passionate about it.

Okay guys, I want to go to Adrian for this next question here. Adrian. I don’t want to get Dr [inaudible] take on this as well, but I’ll start with you Mr. Adrian, you know, there’s, you guys have done so much research throughout your career about corporate culture and Dr Z has, has uh, you know, invested in and helped start a bank a and optometry clinic and auto auction a variety of companies. And it seems like a lot of business owners that I, that I have met, they just struggled to ever grow beyond themselves because they can never seem to figure out how to create a corporate culture that’s not dysfunctional. So Adrian, what advice would you have for all the business owners listening out there who by default have a dysfunctional corporate culture? What could a proactive steps

should they be taking to create a positive corporate culture?

Chester, to you and Adrian must go into some really diseased cultures, some really bad places. The point is no, they never call. And so that the leader you’re describing never called us what we get calls from leaders who are really trying to build a good culture and they just need a little bit more help to inculcate okaythe ideas or get things going. And so you’re right, there’s, there’s a lot of leaders will meet how long, the way that say yeah, culture, you know, that’s something that they, uh, you know, just kinda developed. So they don’t really worry about it. You know, great leader once told us, he said, you know, if you don’t develop a culture, don’t worry, a culture will develop itself now. It won’t be the one you want when you’re going to get a culture. Now for this, you might as well define this in a really positive surviving way and that’s what our work’s been for the last couple of decades.

Or do you guys have like some hard facts behind because that’s an interesting way to look at it. You’re like, if a, if an employees happy this home lives awesome. And, and I always kind of found it to be the opposite of that. So I’m kind of trying to wrap my head around that, about building better families by making someone happy around the water cooler. That’s an interesting concept. Could you guys have, uh, some, some facts of studies on that if you, if you really looked into that because I always thought it was Kinda the other way around, you know, which came first. You guys were saying the egg and I’m saying the chickens. I guess what I’m trying to say. So can you expand on that a little bit more because I’ve always found if you have somebody that’s happy and has a happy household, they’re much, much better employee as a general rule of thumb than some of that comes from a dysfunctional home and they’re fighting, not getting along, thinking about getting divorced and went on and on and on, you know? And so talk about that, break that down a little bit more.

Well you don’t let me jump in here. This was interesting as we speak, a lot of conferences literally all over the world and in one conference we were sitting there and they went out to the managers. What enter the employers, what do you want from your leader? And one of the things that really spurred a lot of this thinking for us as one, uh, one guy said, look, I don’t want my manager just to help me be more productive and be a better worker. I want my manager to help me become a better person. And as you, as you take a look at the way business is done today, it is so all encompassing that those drivers and those, the ability to grow and develop that work is becoming more and more key now. There actually was a wonderful study done at the University of California and I can never say her name right. Foundry. That’s much better. Yeah. Sonia lump, blocky. Yeah.

Who did a deep dive and that was her conclusion that happy at work, you’re literally a 150 percent more likely to be happy in your personal life. Now, I don’t disagree with you that it can be reversed. You know that when happy at work, you tend to go and bring or happy at home. You tend to bring that happiness into the workplace. What our research tells us though, is if you are intrinsically, you know, happy in your home and you’ve got a great personal life and you go into a toxic workplace, you’re not likely to stay. You’re not likely to stay. You’re going to find a culture that you know that, that fits your values, that fits your version of happiness. And so our job has always been, how can we take some of those cultures that are, that are good and make them extraordinary. As Adrian said, toxic cultures don’t call us because they don’t care right

now. Adrian, this is for you. Coming in hot. Can I ask Adrian the rude questions yet or am I mean that’s, that’s what we’re known to do. Okay. Here’s the deal. Adrian, when doing some research about you guys. I mean you have been asked to speak to some of the most massive companies in the world. I mean huge companies have called you guys and asked you to deliver keynotes. And this is. This is the question that I would, I would chop. I’m not asking this. This is how other people see I would ever asked Adrian, why in the world would anybody pay you guys copious amounts of cash to come in and talk about corporate culture. How can you help the companies out there?

My wife asked me to,

don’t people get this? This is. This is common sense. It’s uncommon. We predicates well now we also have a lot of data we bring in. You know, you asked about data earlier, we’ve almost, it’s almost a million people now with survey partners that we’ve interviewed over the last 20 years. So, so it’s one thing we bring, they bring us in because we got a lot of data that it’s very hard to argue with the data and we’ve worked with a lot of companies where we’ve seen things that worked and things that don’t. So, so we also have this, have this, built up, this, this expertise over the years that Kinda, that helped, you know, organizations really hone in on what they’re going to focus in on their culture. And the thing is every culture is different. You know, if we go into southwest airlines, it’s very different than working with Jean and uh, you know, both have had challenges, both have struggles and yet their paths forward are going to be very different. So. So the thing is with culture and employee engagement, there are things that we can do, but we got to figure out what will work within our own cultures.

I’ll give you an opportunity here or to to name drop. You’ve spoken to some big companies, can you name drop some of the bigger companies you’ve spoken to? I mean, do you just kind of tee up a few, a few of the names because you guys have spoken to really the WHO’s who in American business. Do you wanna just name drop a couple names for us.

We’re currently doing a lot of work with American Express. You know, in their leadership development, in their culture. They’re a wonderful culture. I’m going to name drop the company. That’s not huge, but you’re going to love because you’ve used their products all the time. It’s wd 40.

Oh No, I know. I know. You got a camp somewhere right?

There you go. What’s the old adage? You know when you go to college you get a, a spool of duct tape and a can of wd 40 because if it’s, if it’s moving and it shouldn’t, you duct tape it and it’s not moving in

wd 40.

They have this remarkable culture. You know, it’s really interesting. You’re talking about noble causes that they make me laugh, you know, had a research. I said, so what? Why do you do what you do? What’s your noble causing? He goes, oh, it’s easy. World’s peace through lubrication.

So you guys have spoken to American Z. Have you ever heard of a tech company? American Express. You’ve heard of those guys in the back of my mind, I feel like other people might’ve mentioned wd 40 now that then I’m all over that. Over that one company. You guys have spoken to chester that sort of a, a bigger name that folks could identify with at home there?

Well, Johnson and Johnson is a good one. You know, we’ve done some work with Avis budget rental car. We did some really fun to work with Bank of America. Adrian, you’ve got a bunch that you’ve worked with, Morgan Stanley, Danaher. Danaher is that you’ve probably never heard of them or a lot of your list there. The third fastest growing stock over the last 30 years. A phenomenally run organization that had us come in and help with employee engagement. Tom Joyce, their CEO runs a very well run organization all about Kaizen, making things faster, but what Tom told us was that we need to get a heart and then that’s what we do is help provide that far to organizations to give them that next little lifted the performance and you know, we’ve done some fun government where we worked with the state of New York, the state of Michigan that US patent and trademark office is one of our favorites.

It’s the only government agency that’s actually profitable. We take great pride in being a part of that culture. They actually write a check to the government instead of asking for money from the government. So yeah, the US army, we did a bunch of stuff with their medical systems and so on and so no, it’s, it’s really been rewarding. I’ll tell you that there are very few companies that have that kind of name recognition at some point we haven’t gotten to speak with or work with. Some leaders are or helped them develop their culture. It’s given us this really interesting view of, you know, how does culture work in, in a for profit, nonprofit government and so on, and you know, it was really been gratifying is that these principles about good governance and good leadership and good culture, they really are universal because no matter what industry or business you’re in, if you’ve got people, people are people and the principles applying. So it’s been really fun.

That’s a perfect segue into my question for Eric Chap here. The carrot guys were talking to some big names right there and we’ve got a lot of clients that we work with or listeners out there that are small business. One man, one woman show and they’re looking to expand. And so I got a two part questions. We got to have a two parter. So Chester, first question for you Adrian, you’ll come next. But Chester, what’s one action step are the most important thing someone should do as they’re getting ready to hire their first employee there? Just a solo prenuer right now they’re going to move to the next step. So what’s one important piece of information or action item for that person?

Make sure that your values are aligned, you really what your vision of success and their vision of success is the same because you know you’re doubling the size of your company,

right?

Make sure that you’ve got that. That connection I will tell you to particularly for a small company is not only do you want to make sure that they have the right resume and the right capabilities and so on. You want to make sure that you’ve got those values aligned and don’t discount this. Make sure you like them because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with these people and don’t. Don’t downplay likability. If you’re going to spend a lot of time with somebody, please make sure you like him and you like to be around with them and you admire them and they’ve got qualities that you can respect, you know, over and above all the basics which, you know, can I trust them? You know, when I’m pretty sure they’re not a serial killer,

you know, stuff like that. It’s been very good to work with the horses up. I worry about the references to concrete shoes. Can I know when he’s really good at coding? I think a lot of people don’t honestly will hire people that are almost borderline psychopaths on their first round cause they don’t know what to look for and they want to be politically correct. They don’t want to be judgmental of the question. Or you can ask though. Are you a psychopath?

I do. I typically pull the wings off flies and a torture rats with a hacksaw and that’s all I do. All never any people. Adrian part to the question more cowbell. Let’s flip the script and if you’re a new employee, hire into a small company with a culture that’s being defined, what’s something that you should focus on or you should do as the employee to help that founder or owner create the culture they desire? Ooh.

Coming back to what you got to make sure there is some alignment. So one of the questions you could ask around. Yeah, tell me about the vision of this company. You know, get a street simple questions that I want to know as a new employee going in, you know, who are you, you know, what do you, what do you, what do you build here, what do you, what do you serve here? So who are you, where are you going and how are you going to get there? So really three simple questions and sound really basic, but it’s amazing how often, uh, you know, an entrepreneur and won’t be able to answer those questions in a coherent way. You know, they may ramble for 30 minutes, but that’s what we need to know. So who are you as you’re really, what’s your mission? You know, where are you going, what’s your vision? What do you want to accomplish, what you want to change the world, and how are you going to get there? Those values. So if I’m hiring on and you really haven’t defined those, I’m going to be a little bit more confused or a little bit more nervous about signing on. I want to make sure those align with what I want to accomplish as an employee as well.

A z. and these guys are seeing it much more articulately than I could say this, but through readings of work, of, of a chest or an agent over the years. Um, I can, I just can tell you, employees want to have a carrot. They want to know there’s, there’s kind of a, uh, when associated with spitting the vast majority of their waking hours working for somebody. They want to know I’m going to like working for this person or I’m not going to like it at all. But that ambiguousness Z, that vanilla, that vagueness. Nobody wants to work for the ambiguous vague company. I want to get your take z at the optometry clinic. When you’re recruiting your first employees back before you became huge, huge, huge and beautiful z before you became huge and beautiful. How did you recruit your first few employees? What kind of stuff do you do to let people know that you are. God dipped in Pumpkin latte. No, seriously. How did you do it when you started off as an optometrist? You’re now one of the top optometrists in Oklahoma. How did you do it though? Because you know this Dr. Zoellner and associates is what the sign said because there were no associate, no associates. It was just you on man. Seriously, enlighten us.

Well, just what they’re saying. I mean, you try to find people with high character, high, high morals, high, you know, good work ethic that I have the five a’s of all my employees that I kind of think about whenever I’m hiring them. And that is, you know, the attendance, appearance, actressy attitude above and beyond. And it’s almost impossible to sort all that out in an interview. I mean, because I know this sounds crazy. It’s a lot of times people will say things they think they want you to hear instead of the truth of the matter. So I’m a big, I’m a big proponent and uh, I dunno, maybe get these guys’ take on it. I’m a hire fast fire, fast kind of guy. You know, sometimes you make a mistake and you fire, you hire someone that doesn’t fit the culture that you’re trying to build, you know, they’re just, they don’t, they don’t fit.

And the idea that, uh, you have to keep them on because you hired them for a long time and try to fix them verse, replacing them with someone who better fix this. Your culture is something that I did early on back when I only had two, three, four, five employees. It was easy, easier than it is now. Does he own a pylon? Something I’ve learned that you always say is train all of your employees to run everything through the filter of what’s best for the business? Yes. So train them to run that through the filter. And then also before they make any decisions, you always tell them to say, what would you do? Right? So what would I do and what’s best for the business. That’s really all that matters, right? Exactly. Because you want to try to replicate yourself as much as possible.

Chester, hot question for you here. Uh, I’ve heard you say, or I believe I’ve read, but I wrote it down here. It says management is the link between the boardroom and the client management is the link between the boardroom and the client. So in the board room there. Okay, this is what we need to be doing over here, but then the actual execution, can you talk about management and what management is in your mind?

Got to deliver on the corporate prominence. So you’ve got to take that mission, vision, all those commercials, however it is you’re communicating with your customer. Right? And it’s the manager that has to actualize that. So how do I take that promise in my team and how do I then deliver that promise to my, to my customers? And you know, middle management is always the guys that are caught between a rock and a hard place right there, cut between their bosses and their employees in making that happen. I think that’s why, you know, for so long we really kind of positioned ourselves as the managers. That’s friends. Let us help you with the tools, the philosophy, and the wherewithal to get done what you need to get done through the people which are your in, which is the mechanism that you’re going to deliver that. Does that, that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah, and I, you guys are. I have so much knowledge I want to, I want to try to break it down to the most granular, specific, actionable for our listeners out there who run small businesses. I think there’s gotta be somebody out there listening who is saying, but how do I hold someone accountable? Chester to the corporate promise when I don’t have any backups, you know, the corporate promises. We’re going to be on time every time, let’s say, but I don’t have a backup. And then there’s this person’s perpetually late and I don’t have a viable replacement, uh, recruited yet. What advice would you have for somebody out there who’s trying to implement the corporate promise? And yet they don’t have a backup plan.

The manager is ultimately responsible. So it’s the manager that stepped into the breach. And I was reflecting on what you were saying earlier about fire fast, fire fast. And I will tell you, we had that experience where we hired badly and we managed around it for way too long when we should have hired fast and fire fast. So the conundrum that I’ve gotten here, the problem that you have given me is you’ve got no backup, you’ve got nobody to replace it. In that case, you know the manager is the owner. You’ve got to step in and do it yourself and figure out real fast how to get that person out and get the right person in. And I do. And I do think that’s one of the hardest things managers do, is that transition and the fact that you just don’t have the time. So you’ve got to find the time. You’ve got to generate, you know, the, the, the backups and, and have those people ready to go. I love, I love managers that are constantly looking for strengths. They’re constantly looking for that next employee. So when it does happen, they do have a backup. I think those are some of the best managers. We’ve studied,

Adrian, a lot of people get all hung up on how do I manage millennials? How do I do, how do I manage millennials? It’s the first step is they go into the corporate office and they begin to remove all gluten from the office. So let’s do not kill a millennium. They remove all the gluten, then they start to say, our new corporate policy is to everyone needs to share cars all going to uber to work and we all need, we all need more apps. Everyone needs and they try to like almost pander to millennials not realizing these are real humans. Um, but there’s so many people that have built up in their mind this big wall like managing millennials is impossible. Everybody, bro, bro, bro, bro, Bro, I’m telling you. So if you look at you disease, these businesses, optometry clinic or my business elephant in the room just to have our companies, we have a lot of younger people that work in the stores, in the brick and mortar stores. So talk to us about the best advice you would have, Adrian, for how to manage millennials effectively and where people get this wrong. Just deep dive into managing millennials one on one.

Managing millennials. Even though we are millennial days, and one of the reasons is we got a lot of data. Not only we have these hundreds of thousands of people in our surveys, but we have what we call an motivators assessment, a hundred question online assessments and built by psychologists and psychometricians to spit out what motivates you and we’ve had more than 14,000 of those people who are 20 somethings who have taken the assessment over the last couple of years. So we have more data than I think anybody else about really what does motivate millennials and and often what I’ll. I’ll speak on this topic, I’ll throw it out. I say, okay, what do you think motivates millennials? And people yell out different things and inevitably they’re wrong.

The most common motivator from the, the 20 somethings especially is making an impact your work. I want to know that my work has impact. It’s making a difference. Number two is, is the idea to learn and to grow on the job. I want to know that I’m making a difference, but I’m also growing myself and becoming more marketable, more, more saleable later, but the number three motivators, fashion. This is the third most common of 23 different human motivators. This family, and that includes not only my, my family, but also my tribe, you know, and we’re, we’re hearing this from a lot of CEO’s where they’re saying, look, I want to get my uh, millennials to, uh, to work on weekends, work of the holiday. Sometimes they’re telling me no, no, my family, my tribe is more important than, than work. And so it comes back to chester was saying earlier about it’s no longer work life balance.

It’s, it’s life and how do we create this better life experience is when we started attracting and retaining our millennials and it’s just a different way of thinking for us because, you know, like for most of us know who’s in Gen z or, or, or Gen xers or the boomers, we would have rather, you know, moved into a cardboard box after college and moving people. But these millennials, we have such a different mindset and if we’re not, we’re not changing the way we managed to help manage them and more effectively where we’re just not going to be successful.

You just said, I want to make sure I’m getting this right. You just said that was for a lot of baby boomers, a lot of people have a different generation. They would rather go live in a cardboard box in the move back in with her parents and you just said that a lot of millennials to have no problem living with their parents. Um, I am 38, which means I don’t know how my smart phone works and then I’m probably more old school. I am of the group that would say I would rather live in a van down by the river in a cardboard box and ever take a handout or a hand up from anybody almost ever. I hate it. I hate doing that, but we’ve all. And so where does that mindset come from in your mind? You guys have done so much research. You guys have all the data right there. Where did that mindset come from? Where you know, people don’t, uh, you know, uh, millennials don’t have a problem. Uh, moving back in with her parents after college.

One way we’ve created what we call parents. I mean, we did this to our kids, right? So the lawnmower parents, they just cleared the way for, for their kids. So they’re millennials do see mom and dad as, as people who make the life easier for them, you know, the, the, the helicopter idea has passed math to the idea of the lawnmower parents and that’s really what we did to create these now. So we have created millennials now with that said, millennials do have more technical aptitude. They’ve got great energy, great ideas. We have to find ways to bring them into their workplace. But if we feel like they’re going to work 12 hour days, six days a week, you know, we’re going to be alone in our workplaces. We got to change the way we think with these folks.

If I’m out there right now and I go, Hey, what’s the advantage of hiring a millennial? And then what’s the, what’s the value of hiring a, uh, let’s say a baby boomer or somebody more old school chester. I’ll go with you on this if it, if I’m asking myself, what is the benefit? What’s the upside of hiring an old school? You know, the kind of guy that used to skate Z, remember skating on four wheels? Oh yeah. Kate Quad skates on those four wheels playing the dice game, wearing a jean jacket. People that know who tom selleck was and his people who respect the game of Patrick swayze. People who have fantasized about writing inside the Millennium Falcon. Those people, old schoolers or millennials named is Schuyler Hamilton, Madison. All names. That could be any gender. What’s the advantage of hiring a millennial versus a baby boomer or old school or vice versa?

Well, the fact is is that most organizations have both, you know, one of the things we looked at in our book, the best team wins. How do you manage generations? And so you’ve got baby boomers working next to millennials and I think what you’ve got to take a look at is just what do I need them to do? You know, where is it’s going to be a highly technical. If it’s going to be a, uh, involving a lot of social media, I’m much better off with a, with a millennial if it’s a technical or if it’s a relationship kind of thing, if it’s going to be long hours and, and nose to the grindstone and probably going to be better off with the, with a baby boomer. Now I really want to caution us all here. We were falling into the classic trap that if you’re born between certain years, that’s exactly who you are and we can put you in this pigeonhole. You know, it’s, it’s sort of like your, your Xo, delighted. However you say that the soda, logical, whatever it is. I’m a bird, go in. So that’s, you know, I’m a virgo

doing that so far was me. Dr Z is very fair and balanced those eric, but I was pigeon holing none of our listeners that back to you, back to you guys. Sorry there.

And the fact is is that we see a lot of millennials that act like a baby boomers. There’s a lot of baby boomers that have really embraced the digital age to that act, a lot like millennials. So again, you know, get back to who the person is at their core. What do you need them to do, do their values, align, does he does do their skills aligned and most importantly, do their passions align with what they’re doing. You know, it’s one thing to know what to do and how to do it. So why the passion and that’s the biggest differentiator and that transcends all the different generations. You get that right, you’ll get the right fit, you’ll get somebody productive and happy in what they’re doing.

Adrian, uh, I’ve heard that. I’ve read where you guys have once a wrote, you said great culture, share information daily, even hourly. Adrian, what do you mean by this?

Well, what we found, and again coming back to our new work on teams was that, you know, a lot of times we have a feeling that the teams should be harmonious. Well, actually no, the best teams we found today, I actually have a lot of debate about this. It started with this idea of you’ve got to share information you’ve got and we come from a world, you know, it’s a need to know culture, you know, employee, you’re never going to need to know. Frankly, what we’ve moved into is a culture where we’re organizations and teams that are high performing are very old. Even with the things that struggling with. We used to be afraid, oh know the competitors will find out about that and now we realized if we’re not open where people can help in improving the situation are people, you know, the idea is to think about it like your older people have, have ideas in their pockets and they’re not going to bring them out unless we’re open to that, what we’re struggling with and where we value them when they do share their ideas.

Okay. So you guys are, are writing a new book. You’re working on new work right now and you’re talking about how the best team wins and uh, again, that candid, candid transparency, that’s one way that best teams win. Can you share with us about your new book, the Best Team Wins Chester, and why? Maybe everybody there should pick up a copy of it.

Yeah, or two, maybe three.

We looked at teams and a lot of the basic work was done. We’re big fans of lamps. You own it, you know, the five dysfunctions of a team and that, that those foundations of trust and communication so on are still very valid. The reason we wrote the best team wins is that with the new economy, with the GIG economy, with the flexibility that people have, that they’re not just, they’re not staying in jobs for five and 10 years anymore. They’re, they’re very mobile. That there were five attributes of high performance teams in the new digital world that we’re much different than we’d ever seen before. You know, we’ve talked about managing generation that was very different managing to the one, you know, understanding people’s motivators and what their passions are as opposed to old school. Whereas we treat everybody the same because that’s fair. Now it’s a very much an individualized experience at work.

Speed to productivity was an area we looked at very carefully. You know, when, if you’re only going to have an employee for two to three years, which is the estimate around most millennials, baby boomers had maybe five or six jobs, millennials are going to have more like 15. So in this churn of, of, of employees, how do you get them up to speed faster and productive faster? Uh, Adrian talked about, you know, the, the fourth dimension, which is challenge everything, you know, create a culture where there’s emotional safety and where I can give you my best ideas without fear of looking foolish or being disruptive. And then the last one is let’s not forget about the customer. You don’t have a business if you don’t have customers. So we’re doing all these great things to create great products and services and cultures that deliver products that are valued by your customers. And so that, that dynamic, those five dimensions are very different than what we had seen, you know, 10 and 15 and even five years ago. And why we think the book is so helpful.

Adrian, are bestselling authors. You’ve spoken to some of the biggest companies on the planet. I really want to direct this next question for Adrian and then in Chester, feel free to one up your, your partner, your age in this book. Recommendations. Um, you guys, uh, I would recommend all the listeners. Check out your newest book. The best team wins. I also recommend all the listeners go to the culture works.com and check out your website. I reckon everybody out there. What chip, what better way to say I love you. This holiday season with a gift of the best team? Sounds like a plan to me. But Adrian, I want to ask you what book, what book has made the biggest impact in your life? Or maybe what books I jotted down the five dysfunctions of a team. Uh, what, what’s another book that really has made a huge impact in your life

project right now? Writing a book with Marshall Goldsmith and great book. What got you here won’t get you there. One of his classics that I definitely would recommend, because no matter if you run a business with, there’s just one of you or there’s 300 people in your organization like Dr Z, you know, you can stand to benefit from recognizing what those behaviors are that are maybe holding you back from the next level.

Well, I’m going to go with the Bible. There you go.

Wow. Wow. When all else fails, just a real hot take real quick. I just want to say this and this isn’t really. I mean I’m kind of embarrassed that you guys didn’t recommend. The Bible is the first recommendation, so I’m gonna have to give gesture. The wind right there. Chester gets a mega mega point deemable in heaven. They’re nice.

I do want to share a great book title is with your listeners and written by a friend of mine actually didn’t know about giving Tuesday. Does that ring a bell?

Giving Tuesday chop? Is that what I know about boneless Tuesdays at Buffalo? Wild wings. Slightly different. Similar to you Thursday.

So. So you’ve got black Friday, right?

Another color blind guy. Wonderful guy named Henry Kim,

and he and his wife had developed this giving Tuesday, so after black Friday and cyber Monday

you’d give to a charity and it’s actually become quite yet

global phenomenon and it’s very interesting. He, along with Jeremy Heimans, has written a book called new power. That’s how power works in our hyper connected world and how to make this work for you. You know, the hierarchal power has been disseminated when you look at occupy Wall Street and how the Internet is where you go to get information and so on, and it is a fascinating book around new power and where it resides. It’s called new power by Henry Timms. Highly recommended.

Adrian, I have a final question for you and Dr. z dot, please feel free to stop me. I’ll go with Adrian. First gesture second, the same question for both you guys. So we’ll go with Adrian first here. You guys are very successful and uh, uh, obviously you guys are purposeful. You’re intentional about how you organize your life, how you achieve your goals, sort of very practical level. Adrian, how do you organize the first four hours of your typical day?

I usually do is segment my social media, checking Linkedin, etc. It’s the first our email, etc. And then typIcally I’ll be researching and writing whether I’m preparing for next presentation, whether I’m, whether I’m working on a book that my morning is my most productive time when you don’t get as many interruptions, so I’m outlining, I’m writing, I’m researching. Uh, but you know, first I’m, I’m, I’m answering those emails that are clogged up in the night and uh, and then you got to try and focus and shut off the distractions for the next little while.

Again, it’s time for one upmanship here, sir. Mr chester, how do you organize the first four hours of your day?

It’s a great question for me because I actually have seven negotiables that I tried to get done before noon everyday.

There we go.

There you go. And it’s really interesting. I actually have a very spiritual background and so I take the first little bit and do some meditation or, or prayers. I make sure that I get some exercise in some stretch, take my vitamins and, and have a good breakfast, and then I like to write in my journal, you know, I learned early on that if you can kind of reflect on the day before and write it down, it helps put things into context. I do. I do A take five or 10 minutes or to read some scriptures or some inspirational talk and I’ve got a whole list of those that I do and then I developed a really fun habit. I’d love to share it with your listeners. Um, have you ever kept a gratitude journal? Have you ever?

Yes, I have. Yes, I have.

I’m, I’m a huge fan. And so at the beginning of the day I write a number one, two, three, and then there’s three things that I’m really grateful for it. And you know, it’s really interesting. Almost always they’re people, you know, and I, I don’t, I don’t say this to, as my father would say, you don’t blow smoke up adrian’s killed. But often adrian is, is on that list. You know, adrian, the night been partners and friends for for 20 years and we’ll have interaction to work on projects and I’ll put down and I, I’m, I’m really grateful that, you know, adrIan got six in my life. I, my wife shows up on that list, my kids, people that I work with, the opportunity to do what we do and I think that reflection in my journal and that gratitude journal in particular have really helped me get my days off to a good start and that mindset that after I’ve looked at my newsfeed on my phone and I’m ready to kill myself because it’s so negative, you know, that I realized that there really are great people out there that and then I’m one of the luckiest guys I know.

And so those seven things for me are non negotiable. Every day and I signed really get my day off to a great start.

I’m going to give you the final question. The final ability to interrogate these bestselling authors, these incredible guys who’ve spoken. Again, just to recap here, these guys have have spoken over the years to bank of America, avis johnson and johnson, wd 40 american express z, don’t waste the question is when I’ve spoken to them too, they just didn’t pay me copious amounts of money. I’m like, okay, let’s go with chester first. That way we can let adrIan come in and do the. Okay, so you could go back in to when you guys were starting

your businesses, starting the business of writing books and speaking and doing what you’re doing now. So how many years have you guys been doing this?

Almost 20 years now.

Okay, so let’s go. Go. We’re turning back the time. Twenty years. You get into the share reference.

Oh,

get back to you. Sorry. We’re contractually obligated through her foundation to mention her and every show. It’s a. Sorry about that. If you could go back 20 years, what advice would you give yourself gesture at you first

over 20 years. We’ve got four kids and a wonderful little old victorian house in summit, New Jersey, right across the river from New York and we’re starting to declutter and boy, if I could give myself one piece of advice would be don’t, don’t collect so much stuff, collect, collect more experiences and, and, uh, you know, do more, make more memories and uh, and not collect as much stuff.

Fascinating. All right. Adrian,

kind of the same vein, but with more with people. It’s, you know, don’t get rid of faster the bad influences in your life. We’d had some over over the years and it’s just says we’ve tried to make her mark over the years and they never worked here. So get rid of the bad influences. Surround yourselves with people who are positive but challenge you to now people who are easy on you, but people who make you better. And I think, you know, I would, I would give myself that advice.

Yeah. That’s one of my core things is my core statements. People, it all the time you say it. And that is people change. Seldom get a bad egg as well.

If you’re out there, seriously, I mean this stuff, you’re out there and you own a company and you want to take your business to the next level. Step one, you’ve got to give that branding going on. See that marketing dollar on you? Come on, you got to sell something, right to get that help, but step three, once you can actually sell something, you got to manage people, and I mean this, what night at a 10 people chapter we’ve coached over the years struggled wIth managing people and so I would encourage you without reservation to pick up the best team wins. They’re the newest book from adrian, caustic and chester. Elton and the carrot guys were like, we like to end every show with the boom, which around here, culturally speaking, stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. So are you guys prepared to, uh, to brIng a boom? They’re from New Jersey?

Absolutely.

Are you prepared? Absolutely. Are you prepared? Filling? Boom. Malicious? I’m psych. Psychologically impaired. Okay, here we go.